Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2018: Week 24

The Ray Wars, also known as the Ray/Ray Wars, were a long and bitter feud between due South fans of the character Ray Kowalski and fans of the character Ray Vecchio. This feud had lasting repercussions for due South fandom.

The Wars began with the casting of Callum Keith Rennie as Detective Stanley Raymond Kowalski, a move that replaced the original Ray, played by David Marciano, who had gone undercover for the FBI to impersonate a Mafia boss. In the season opener for the third season, Kowalski is introduced, not as Kowalski, but as Detective Ray Vecchio. Not only does Kowalski look nothing like Vecchio, but he also has a completely different attitude, style, and personality.

A number of fans who liked Vecchio just as he was became upset by the way the show presented the change. Rather than introduce Kowalski as a character in his own right, the show framed the change as something to be accepted, just in the same way that Fraser had to accept it. This caused some fans to consider the show over at the end of the second season, even to the point where some said the show jumped the shark.

Other fans thought that adding RayK was the best thing that could have happened to the show because the slashy subtext between Fraser and RayK was very strong, and they hadn't seen the slash between Fraser and RayV. So, at their heart, the Ray Wars were a shipping war as well.